8 ways to be more productive in Windows 11 – Computerworld

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When you do that, all your other open apps will display inside a new window. Click any of those apps to fill in spots in the rest of the layout. The grouping is saved as a Snap Group that you can to return to if you’ve opened other apps or minimized any of the group’s app windows. To return to the group, hover your mouse over the taskbar icon of any of the applications in a Snap Group. You’ll see thumbnails of all the apps in the group. Click the thumbnail to return to the group.

For more details about Snap Layouts and related features, see “Make multitasking a Snap on your Windows PC.”

8. Use the secret Start menu

Hidden in the bowels of Windows 11 are many powerful tools that can make you more productive, such as Network Connections for viewing and managing your internet connections; Device Manager for managing your devices; Terminal, an interface for powerful command-line tools, especially for IT pros; Task Manager for helping make your PC more efficient; and many others.

That’s all well and good, but unless you use them all the time, it’s easy to forget that they exist. And even if you do remember they exist, it’s often not easy to find them. Some are buried deep in the Settings app. Others require that you launch them from a command line. And yet others may be squirrelled away in a place you’ll never find.

There’s a trick for getting to them quickly — use what some people call the secret Start menu. To launch it, right-click the Start icon to the left of the search box on the taskbar, or press the Windows key + X. A menu appears with a long list of these tools. Click whatever tool you want to use and get going with it.

Preston Gralla / Foundry

This story was originally published in July 2023 and most recently updated in April 2026.